Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday July 26, 2012 @06:47PM
from the lets-have-a-look dept.

In a follow-up to a story earlier this week, derekmead writes "Skype has gone under a number of updates and upgrades since it was bought by Microsoft last year, mostly in a bid to improve reliability. But according to a report by the Washington Post, Skype has also changed its system to make chat transcripts, as well as users' addresses and credit card numbers, more easily shared with authorities. As we've already seen with Facebook and Twitter, big Internet firms aren't digging their heels in against government requests, which shouldn't come as a shock; angering the authorities is bad business. The lesson then is that, while the Internet will always retain a vestige of its Wild West days, as companies get bigger and bigger, they're either going to play ball with governments or go the way of Kim Dotcom."

The internet doesn't need the damn middlemen. My computer can connect to another's computer and we can exchange encrypted traffic and we don't need anyone in the middle to snoop on us to make that possible.

It's like if I was in the same room as a friend, and some slick "suit" type slides up and says, "Hey, you wanna talk to your friend over there? Instead of going over and talking to him, hows about you tell me what you want to tell him, and I'll go tell him what you said. Then I'll do the same in reverse, so you two can talk."

Umm, how about no thanks? It's time for the programmer community to develop easy to use, robust, strongly encrypted, point to point programs. We shouldn't need Skype, or Facebook, or Yahoo, or Google in order to communicate with each other online. Putting all our eggs in those baskets that are out to "monetize" our communication and snoop on it for governemtsn is going to end badly for us all.

So the people "up to something" will use encryption we cannot monitor, you say? Well, I guess that means that everyone who doesn't use our standard encryption that isn't worth being called encryption is suspicious just for using an encryption method we cannot eavesdrop in.

Thank you for your input, citizen, it will be considered with the next round of new laws.

That will work until the alternative solution crosses a certain threshold of users, the founders sell out to Microsoft or Apple or Google and the new technology is monetized and put under monitoring, just like Skype and Vonage and Napster and Lindows before them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Most people THINK they do not have anything to hide, such as when they talk about the antics of their 3-year-old grandson or other inane conversations. Therefore most people would not switch or quit using Skype. Anyone who does have deep dark secrets they wish to hide from the KGB, FBI, NSA, Gestapo or other such agencies, would not be using Skype or any other easily intercepted communication system.